Sternes Fiction and the Double Principle

The author of Tristram Shandy made frequent use of literaryfragments from other writers, as part of his own style. LaurenceSterne's quotations, plagiarisms and allusions were often employedin the service of the pleonasm, or 'performed pun'. Jonathan Lambdescribes Sterne's operation of the pleonasm as his 'doubleprinciple'. He sees this style not as the key to some clever puzzlewhose clues we go on solving in the hope of total disclosure ofmeaning (as some critics have claimed); rather the opposite, thatit is a consoling reminder that neither we nor the text can ever becomplete. Lamb severs Sterne from the Locke tradition and frees himfrom the 'influence' oriented studies which have aimed toauthenticate him through his borrowings. This allows us to read himas a writer eagerly exploring the turns and paradoxes ofassociationist thought and adapting the rhetoric of the sublime tothe stutterings of ordinary speech.